It is useless to have an ideological outlook that ends up using the poor to serve political and personal ends. Ideologies end up poorly. They do not work. Ideologies have an incomplete or sick or bad relationship with people. Ideologies do not take into account the people. For proof, just look at the last century. Where did those ideologies lead? To dictatorship, every time, always.

This just breaks my heart. One of my closest friends is Venezuelan and I have happy memories of spending time in Caracas on the occasion of her wedding twenty-some years ago. It was by no means a perfect country -- there was abject poverty side-by-side with great wealth, and there was corruption-- but it was free, and it had a growing middle class, and there was a sense that it was a nation on the rise with a lot to look forward to. Then came Chavez and socialism, and here is Venezuela today. You can't buy toilet paper no matter how rich you are. You have to stand in long lines for food staples. And when food deliveries arrive, this is what happens.